OpenStreetMap offers many possibilities for creating high resolution paper maps. Unlike commercial map services such as Mapquest and Google Maps, there are only a few restrictions on what you can do with OSM images.

Basic Export

The main Export functions on the openstreetmap.org front page, can export arbitrary map areas within a limited range of resolution, suitable for simple situations. The PDF export (found using the "Share" icon) is suitable for printing on high resolution printers. Bitmap output formats are available, but as the resolution is increased the font size gets smaller and text readability does not improve.

Simple web interfaces for printing OSM maps

The services listed here are split into global and regional ones. An attempt has also been made to rank them by features and overall quality.

Local services

cycle.travel (web) - lets you download a really nice vector PDF after planning a cycle route on the site (Western Europe and US only, log-in needed for PDF export). No source code available. In Europe it is not including Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and anything toward east. No Scandinavian countries are included.

Get Veloroad - generates vector and raster images for selected area and size (in mm), allows adding GPX trace. Russia and Baltic states only.Source code on github (WTFPL-licensed and uses some libraries under MIT License and BSD 2-Clause license). Dead link as of 2018-05

Desktop programs, libraries and scripts

This is a collection of tools and open source projects that can be used to produce printable maps from OSM and user data. Some technical expertise is usually required.

bigmap ([2], also bigmap 2) - Forms a big map arranging tile images side by side. Interface to adjust the view. Download a perl script to generate a stitched together image. This results in a very big bitmap image which allows you to print at high resolution, although font size can be a problem.

Category:Tile stitching - Lists these and other tools which can download tiles and stitch them together to form a large (hi-res) image.

Merkaartor is desktop OSM editor that can output SVG and bitmaps using presets and editable styles.

osmrender.pl is a small PERL program that can be customized easily and draws simple maps.

Osmarender renders an SVG map image which can generate a high-quality raster image.

CartoType's sample program generally displays realtime vector maps from a local offline OSM datafile on a desktop PC according to an own rendering style, you can create easily a PNG bitmap file from current screenview.

Note that many of these renderers can be configured for creating your own tiles, and you might then follow the tile-stitching approaches listed above

Increased resolution, the ability to take a map style configuration and uniformly increase the scale of all of the features, may be important for good quality printouts. See high-resolution tiles.